Lost Landscapes

The 36 images in the series are bigger, more abstract and textural than those in Pathfinder. Maybe even more concerned with surface treatment rather than depth and perspective. Heavier use of intense black and the elimination of black altogether. My goal was to create dreamlike, semi-surreal landscapes using architecture.

Bonnie Loyd, Managing Editor of Landscape Magazine, wrote this about a selection she published in 1983,

"People who are geographers, whether by training or inclination, see a photograph and want to know where it was taken. Fastening a place name to the picture allows them to see it. Their mental image of the place is conjured up, and they fit the photograph into their impression of that place.

But having a place name also allows them not to see. They don’t have to grapple with the photograph on its own terms, to examine all the details, to speculate about what the photographer sees, to imagine what lies beyond the edges. It’s difficult not knowing the place.

Burton Pritzker doesn’t give us any labels. He doesn’t identify the location so we can say, “Aha, I know that place,” and move on. His enigmatic images challenge our own interpretation. His photographs almost seem to be from another world, or from a dream. But the scenes he captures are archetypal places we know, even though we have never been there – scenes we almost recognize, yet can’t quite place. His lost landscapes are ones we simply haven’t found yet."